We have a client who has been on YouTube for more than two years with a YouTube channel complete with playlists. Along with his monthly market updates, he uses it to share news about other local businesses.

The interest to visiting his channel has been, well, pathetic. Oh, we've received views by sharing links from Facebook to YouTube, but certainly not what we hope to have.

Recently, at one of our strategic planning sessions, we discussed how to implement videos for clients on Facebook. Since our client had us editing his videos in YouTube, it was natural for us to test whether there was any value to showing the video to his 258 fans on Facebook. Our client happened to have one of his local business spotlights coming up. So we uploaded it to YouTube, cleaned it up in their video editor, which is a simple editing tool. Then we downloaded the video to use on Facebook rather then just the link from YouTube. The results were astounding! Normally we see less than five views on YouTube, this time we saw 18 views. What happened on Facebook proved to me that Facebook is much more than a compliment to YouTube but, instead a major contender to taking on the video market. Why would I say this? The video went viral. Within a day we were at 13 likes and 750+ reach and continued to build to what you see as of June 14th, in this photo, which is 1864 reach and 892 views.

We then tested it on his monthly market report. The results of the test convinced me that all videos going forward need to be on Facebook as well as YouTube. With the five likes on YouTube, it went absolutely nowhere else. Yet, with the five likes on Facebook, the video was able to reach 120 people and, of that, 66 viewed the video. Ok, five views on YouTube versus 66 on Facebook. I'm very convinced.

So, what made the difference? To share videos on YouTube, you have to go through a series of steps. To share on Facebook it was seven steps (I needed to login... what's that password again?). I really, really, really need to want to share the video from YouTube. Facebook, on the other hand was as simple as one or two clicks.

I also like how the format of the videos are presented on Facebook. You stop, click on the video, and, if you want to watch without sound, you can. Great for situations where sound might be an issue. If Facebook had the video editor in place that YouTube has, I really wonder if I'd even bother with YouTube?

To contact Alyse Mitten please call: 484.705.6564 or email: alyse@gomaava.com